Along the eastern flank of the Colorado Rockies, nature's mountain-building forces have warped the earth's crust upward into two prominent ridges called "hogbacks." Rising abruptly from the sweeping expanse of prairie, they stand like bulwarks protecting the higher main ranges to the west. Most mountains have either sharp peaks, like gigantic church steeples, or broad flat domes. A hogback is different. It is a long, extended ridge with a very narrow backbone, like an elongated version of an Ozark wild hog-hence the name. The hogbacks of Colorado's front range, which I can see out my window as I write these reflections, can be traced from Wyoming in the north all the way southward into New Mexico.
In some places, the hogbacks are wide enough along the spine to carry a county road; in others, there is room for nothing more than a footpath. I have stood astride a hogback ridge with my right foot on the downhill slope to the west, and my left foot on the downhill slope to the east. The world falls away abruptly on both sides, steep enough that a person could roll all the way to the valley below, hastened here and there by a free fall of thirty feet or more off a vertical cliff.
Imagine a hiker who has stumbled off the path. An encounter with a rattlesnake or a loose rock along the trail is enough to set the adventure in motion. He slides and bounces half-way down the western slope before he regains his footing. In panic, lest he resume his fall' he scrambles wildly back up the slope. But his momentum is so great that upon reaching the top he accidentally casts himself headlong across the trail and down the opposite flank of the ridge. This is called "over-correction."
With a little more imagination we can picture our hiker, in his attempt to regain a solid footing on the path atop the hogback, flinging himself first off one side of the ridge, then off the other. He might struggle this way indefinitely-an exhausting way to take a hike. Or he might stumble all the way into one abyss or the other! and stay there permanently. The hiker, like you and me, wants only a safe and peaceful walk along the high ground atop the ridge. But the landscape, the law of gravity, and his own efforts all have a way of working against him.
Legalism, License, and Love
In the fifth chapter of his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes the Christian life as a journey along a spiritual hogback. (Okay, I admit Paul's geology is not explicit. But the parallel is still very clear. Besides, even Jesus knew the hogback analogy: didn't he once say, "Narrow is the road that leads to life?").
Paul lays out the landscape of possibilities and dangers that lie before us. The safe path along the top of the ridge is the Holy Spirit himself (v.16). The Spirit keeps us on the high ground of freedom in Christ (v.1). To the left of this narrow road yawns the abyss of legalism (v.4); to the right, the abyss of license (v.13).
Legalism means trying to earn God's favor by keeping the law. License means abusing our freedom by giving in to our selfish desires. Legalism comes from good intentions and hidden pride. License comes from bad intentions and open pride. The flesh-our fallen human nature-is the force of gravity that tries to pull us off the high ground (vv.17,19). The flesh is not particular: it is content to send us stumbling down into either legalism or license-just so we don't stay on the path, walking by the Spirit (vv.16-17).
Our new life in Christ is a life of freedom from slavery: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (v.1). In the context of Paul's letter, the main emphasis is on freedom from the compulsion to earn God's acceptance by doing good things; that is, from legalism. But Christian freedom is also freedom from license, from enslavement to our selfish desires.
The faith through which we are saved from a guilty conscience and condemnation under the law is a faith that expresses itself in love (v.6), the love that God pours into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Through this love we become servants of one another (w.13-14). So freedom, in the Christian sense, is freedom both from the tyranny of the law and from the tyranny of self-indulgence. By grace, through faith, we are kept atop the ridge. Love is the balance between the abyss of legalism and the abyss of license.
Tripped Up
Because of the force of gravity-the flesh-you and I have a definite propensity to go downhill into legalism or license, even when we know it is better, and safer, to stay on the high ground. Legalism, as ugly as it sounds to the ear, has a real appeal to our fallen human nature. Whenever we get displeased with ourselves, or impatient with the pace of God's work in our lives, we take control and launch a fast-paced self-improvement program. We go faster, or in a different direction, than the Holy Spirit is leading.
Certainly we cannot compromise in correcting error and proclaiming truth. But we should still be restrained by love in what we say and in how we say it.
Sooner or later, however, the root of human pride trips us up and sends us stumbling down towards the abyss of legalism. In attempting to make ourselves better, so as to compel God to grant us his favor, we resort to perfectionism, striving to attain high ideals, intense exercises of will power. But our good intentions are betrayed by a pride that sends us to ourselves, rather than to God, for the good we seek. Off the path of freedom in Christ, falling away from grace (v.4), we find ourselves again submitted to a yoke of slavery (vv.1,4). We struggle to be good on our own, and we fail.
Many of us can reflect on the course our lives have followed, individually and in the Christian relationships we have shared, and see how we have drifted towards legalism. We may have put unreasonable pressure on ourselves, or on one another, to "shape up." We may have embarked on grand schemes to build a better Christian life. We may have distracted ourselves from an honest reckoning with selfishness, bitterness, fear, or covetousness in our hearts, by our frenzy of earnest activity.
But none of it has worked for our lasting good, and ultimately we grow tired of the pressure, tired of the rigidity, tired of the intensity, tired of the rules and regulations-even the ones we made up ourselves. We cry out, "Lord, deliver us from this abyss of slavery. We are helpless of ourselves, but we trust in you to carry us back to the path of the Holy Spirit, on the high ground of freedom in Christ."
Casting Off Restraint
And he does. We stand atop the hogback ridge once more; we breathe deeply of the fresh air of freedom; we look joyfully across the sweeping landscape of possibilities that come by faith working through love (v.6). But a word of caution is in order. From these newly-won heights, it is once more possible to fall. For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another" (v.13).
This time Paul cautions against license, against doing the selfish, sinful things our fallen natures incline us to do, against using our freedom as an opportunity to love ourselves, rather than God and one another (v.15). In our haste to scramble up the steep left-hand slope and escape from legalism, we may cast ourselves headlong down the right hand slope of license. Like our imaginary hiker, we may seriously overcorrect.
I used to think of license in a lurid, narrow sense, as consisting of things like nude beer parties. Now I see it in a broader sense, as casting off the restraints that the call to love imposes on us. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to observe two particular varieties of license that seem to aMict churches and groups that have recently fought their way out of legalism.
Negativity and Abdication
The first is undue freedom in expressing negative opinions about what was done under the old legalistic way of life, about who did it, and about the damage it caused. Free at last from fear of disapproval, free from false ideals of unity or loyalty, inspired to uncover and proclaim the truth, it is all too easy to blast customs and people with an uninhibited 12-gage charge of criticism.
Certainly we cannot compromise in correcting error and proclaiming truth. But we should still be restrained by love in what we say and in how we say it. Love keeps our exercise of freedom from degenerating into self-indulgence. We must indeed speakthe truth, but we must speak it in love. Neither rigid rules nor unrestrained freedom enable us to meet this high call. It is possible only by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
The second example of license in reaction to legalism is that of using our new-found freedom to abdicate responsibility for protecting the life we share with our brothers and sisters. This applies especially to leaders, but also to the rank-and-file members of Christian groups. The easy way through a difficult time of change is to relax all authority, to legitimize all viewpoints, to be overly liberal in exposing even the essentials of the group's life to criticism.
The easy way through a difficult time of change is to relax all authority, to legitimize all viewpoints, to be overly liberal in exposing even the essentials of the group's life to criticism.
The balance between openness to honest appraisal on the one hand, and surrender to a people-pleasing spirit on the other, is not an easy one to strike. Again, love restrains us-this time from abdicating responsibility. And again, it is possible only by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
The "Good Tempter"
What is the secret to staying on the narrow path atop the hogback ridge of life? Paul gives us two answers. We are led by the Spirit (v. 18), and we walk by the Spirit (v.25).
The Spirit leads us as a shepherd guides his sheep, or as a breeze carries a ship across the water. The Holy Spirit opposes the works of the flesh in us, and moves us gently in the opposite direction. I like to think of the Holy Spirit as the "Good Tempter." The flesh tempts us to do bad things. The Holy Spirit, with greater power, "tempts" us to do good things.
Our response to this leading of the Spirit, if we are to stay on the path, is to walk by the Spirit. We must follow his promptings; give in to his temptations; commit righteousness, not sin. We might describe walking by the Spirit in familiar phrases like "toeing the mark" or "walking the chalk line;" we follow a rule, or standard, or principle. But the Holy Spirit does not draw a line or establish a principle to guide us. The Holy Spirit himself is the line or principle. The Holy Spirit himself is a new law, our new life, enabling grace, God's love poured into our hearts. Where we are in the Spirit, we are in the path.
Running from the Rattlesnake
The challenges of our journey through life remind me of another hiking story-this time, one that actually happened. Back in the Allegheny Mountains during the Great Depression, three boys went for an all-day hike in early spring. One of them had worn a hole in the seat of his trousers, and his mother had sewn a thick wool patch over it.
Around midday, the boys stopped along the trail for lunch. The one with the patched trousers sat down on a log to rest, failing to notice a large rattlesnake coiled behind the log. The snake buzzed loudly and struck the lad right in the seat of the pants. Now a rattler's fangs are not straight, but curved. (Imagine your index finger and middle finger to be the pair of poisonous fangs. Curve them a third of the way towards the palm of your hand and look at them. That's what a rattler's fangs are like.) On this occasion, the fangs hooked through the thick wool patch, narrowly missed penetrating the boy, and left the rattler dangling, unable to let loose of his prey.
The young lad heard the rattler's warning buzz and felt the snake strike him in the rump. He was terrified. Though a Christian, he did not respond in biblical fashion; he did not turn the other cheek. Like any red-blooded American boy, he lit out of there as though he were shot out of a cannon. His only thought was to get away from the snake. He ran up one side of the mountain and down the other. He crashed through blackberry thickets; he scrambled over piles of boulders; he forded several streams. But no matter how fast or how far he ran, the rattlesnake kept right up with him. He could hear it rattling close behind, seeming to match him stride for stride.
Adrenalin and Love
That boy's story makes me think of my own life, and the lives of lots of Christian folks I have known. It makes me think of the hogback ridge in Colorado, with the steep slope and dark abyss on either side; ot slides into license and over-correcting plunges into legalism. In particular, it makes me think of the way Christian groups sometimes react when they realize they have been under bondage to either legalism or license. Their overpowering impulse is to charge off in the other direction, to over-correct.
If we have tumbled down the slope of legalism, the answer is not to rush headlong down the slope of license or vice-versa.
The young lad stampeded up and down both sides of the ridge quite a few times before he got his problem solved. Things didn't get better until he stopped running wildly back and forth, and took a calm stand back on the trail. He didn't have to shuck his jacket, shirt, boots, and longjohns, and then slink home ashamedly behind a fistful of violets. But he did have to make the one, well-chosen change necessary to get rid of his problem.
It is just the same with our churches and groups. If we have tumbled down the slope of legalism, the answer is not to rush headlong down the slope of license (or vice-versa). The answer is to let the adrenalin of fleshly effort subside, observe the restraints of unselfish love, and take a calm stand on the right path. "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit."
Jim McFadden lives with his wife, Clare, in Colorado, they have 6 grown sons. Jim is a member of ChristLife's Board of Directors.
